No Place Like Home
by RiapsedEndOf
Summary: "Let's go home, Kaneki." But could he, really? After all, he'd gone too far down the yellow brick road. Hadn't he? The final scene of Tokyo Ghoul root A, from Kaneki's perspective. One-shot.


**No Place Like Home.**

I am stuck. You and I, we've been thrown into a world we don't belong in; it's far too cruel. You wandered after me _somewhere, over the rainbow…way up high…_ but this is no lullaby and the bluebirds are actually vultures picking at the remains of the dead. You wandered after me, my Dorothy while I remain as the wizard – a fake, a fake, a fake…

Don't mind the fucked up artificial half-ghoul behind the curtain; he doesn't want to be seen, nor heard, nor found by you. Please, please, please leave, go back over the rainbow and don't come back for me. I am not who I am meant to be any longer. People change, for better or for worse. Well, it was for worse.

I'm not all that cut out to be a protagonist, but if I were to be a lead role, it would most certainly be—  
—A tragedy, because _there's no…yellow bricks to follow back and run from that disaster…_ I can't go back; I can't be fixed; I can't turn around on this road to ruin, so why are you following me? Stop searching.

 _I don't think I'm coming home and I said  
_ _I'll check in tomorrow if I don't wake up dead…_

(Oh, we are at the end of this road to ruin, but this is by no means the beginning… We're Past the Point of No Return.)

I don't want you to fall with me any farther than you already have. I could never taint you, it's not my nature no matter how far into the dark I've gone.

( _If you fall then I will too_.)

Please, don't.

( _We can chase the dark together, i_ _f you go, then so will I.)_

Don't follow me; it'd be all my fault…

( _Please lead me out of the dark—_ )

You've helped me since long ago; you provide solace in this strange and twisted world of ours. The sunlight, the moonlight of the darkest nights. How could I ever make that go dark? To lose you would be the worst form of torture, worse than losing Mom, worse than losing Ryoko, worse than that abhorrent room with the checkered floors and the single chair and the pliers and the centipede and the blood on the floor my blood my blood the blood of my fingers my toes my eye it was in my eye and the centipede was in my ear it hurt it hurt oh it hurt but  
…But I couldn't bear to lose you. Even after the first disaster, you were still the person most important to me, even though that was when I began to avoid you. I'm so sorry… I was just scared; I know you understand.

I'm still scared, Hide. Even as you approach me with a smile and raise your hand as if you were greeting me on the street like normal. Even now, you're warm as ever and I'm still scared, scared you're mad at me, mad that I didn't talk to you, didn't tell you, mad that I had run away – scared that you hate me, hate me because I'm not human anymore and because of the way I'm so fucked up, so fucked up and I've killed, I'm a murderer now so how could you still care about me?

I can't go back; not now. I just can't. Not yet. Maybe not ever, but… I just don't want to hurt you. I'll be fine.

 _Won't give up, I've come this far.  
_ _Know what's right in my heart.  
_ _I'll get back to my home,  
_ _But for now I'm on my own._

(But _there's nothing like a trail of blood to find your way back home,_ right?

No, that can't be…)

I lost my home long ago. The wizard of Oz does not have a home to return to like you do, Dorothy. I don't have a hot air balloon, and even though we come from the same place, I switched with the real Kaneki, the original Kaneki, the one that had a home by your side.

 _No longer recognize the place I call home,  
_ _No longer recognize this face as my own,  
_ _Somewhere, this fate, I lost control…_

…Because after all, things fall apart and that's how all tragedies end, after all, isn't it? I've changed, I'm a different person - what once was can't be again.

 _A guest in my own home is how I feel  
_ _Dear sanity, I miss you so, please come back to me…_

( _Breakable, Unbreakable,  
_ _Shakable, Unshakable…)_

You're chatting it up with me as if I never left and none of this happened. As if I didn't become someone else six months ago, as if I never disappeared, as if my left eye wasn't that of a ghoul's, as if my hair wasn't white as snow, as if neither of us were in battle gear of opposing sides in this battle. No, instead you're smiling at me like always, and you've made some weak coffee that isn't so great even though it's the best thing I've tasted in half a year. I wish you didn't find me here. I wish you weren't involved with the CCG. I wish I wasn't involved with Aogiri. I wish we didn't have to meet again like this. I wish you could just go on remembering me as I should have been and leave it that way, because really, I'm fine, so you can leave me be… I'm alright, Hide, so leave me alone. Please.

 _It comes in waves, I close my eyes  
_ _Hold my breath and let it bury me  
_ _I'm not okay, and it's not alright  
_ _Won't you drag the lake and bring me home again?_

Well, maybe I am a little lonely. ("Rabbits die of loneliness, you know?!") Maybe I was the rabbit all along… Maybe I did wish, just a little, that I'd see you again. Just…not under these circumstances.

You say the very first thing you spoke to me after the first disaster, and somehow, for a moment, everything is kind of okay. I actually smile. You've made me laugh. How do you do that?

 _On my own, never known of this light leading me home  
_ ' _Cause a trillion trillion trillion years have taught me I'm alone._

I forgot how this felt. Sunshine. Talking to you feels like sunshine. It's warm and pleasant; it feels like I'm back in a time where everything was better. Talking with you is feeling a warm zephyr that unfreezes pieces of me and allows them to feel again. You're loosening the vice around my heart with your voice; you're all warm and bursting with your willpower and love.

" _Let's just leave and go back home"  
_ _Take my hand and fly away._

You say to me, "Let's go home."

Can I?

( _Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones…and I will try to fix you.)_

But I've Fallen Inside the Black; can I go back now? Is my home really my home anymore with all the things I've done, the things I've seen, the things I've felt-

( _I can help you through this, but you have to take my hand… I can take you home. Take my hand; take my hand!)_

That's right… I remember now.

( _Bring me home in a blinding dream, through the secrets that I have seen. Wash the sorrow from off my skin, and show me how to be whole again._ )

Just because I'm a half-ghoul…doesn't necessarily mean I can't be whole, does it? I remember now, looking at my cell phone with an unconscious smile spreading across my face: a message from you. Because even when the world had turned on its axis and the south became north and the north became the sky, even when everything crashed around me, even when I felt there was nowhere to go, I had you to return to, didn't I? I had Somewhere I Belong after all, didn't I?

( _All because of you, I believe in angels - not the kind with wings; no not the kind with halos: the kind that bring you home when home becomes a strange place. I'll follow your voice, all you have to do is shout it out._ )

Why did I forget something like that? Why did I throw it all away? I wonder how I could ever have thought it better to do that; I can't believe I almost left it all behind. Where did my humanity go? I had burned the good and the bad; how could I?

 _When what we love we burn  
_ _It's from the ashes that we yearn  
_ _To be the phoenix that rises up from the flames._

But something is very wrong.

You're still smiling but you're kneeling there with your blood on the ground, it's your blood and there's too much; surely you couldn't be… Surely it isn't a fatal wound; of course not. Your shoes are coated in the blood from your torso; click your red ruby slippers together, my sunshine, before it's too late – There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home…

 _Familiar sins come crashing in  
_ _and sever  
_ _forever  
_ _and after._

I can't stop staring. I can't move, I can't breathe; this fear is worse than that of your rejection. I catch you before you collapse any further.

"Let's go home."

( _So here we are, fighting and trying to hide the scars. I'll be home tonight; take a breath and softly say  
_ _Goodbye.)_

I begin to cry. The tears feel strange on my cheeks. I can feel you willing me not to be sad if I lose you because _this is just my temporary home; it's not where I belong_.

This world  
…Is wrong.

 _Swing low, sweet chariot… comin' for to carry me…home…_

You've become a dead weight. Your breathing is shallow; I can barely feel your heartbeat. I don't want to lose you…

You are my home.

( _In the stillness of the shining sky  
_ _Is your home of return  
_ _Beyond the darkness where the moon sinks  
_ _Is a narrow path that leads you  
_ _Back to the beginning.)_

I hold you and cry softly. You feel one drip onto your face, and you do your best to smile. Within just the short time you spent with me just now, you had managed to bring not only a smile to my lips, but laughter to my throat. More than half a year without those things, that's saying something. You have always been good at that.

 _If you get there before I do…tell my friends I'm coming right after you…  
_ _Comin' for to carry me home._

Anteiku is on fire. I'm holding you in the heat of the flames and for the first time in a long while I am aware of the warmth.

Ah, I missed you.

I'm glad we could see each other again, Hide. I smile at your sleeping form as my everything comes crashing in around me. I hold you close; I feel your heat against my chest.

 _My old friend…it's time I leave you here for once for all in frozen alabaster.  
_ _Believe me…  
_ _Because there is no place like home._

* * *

 **Songs referenced:**

 _ **Somewhere Over the Rainbow - The Wizard of Oz  
No Place Like Home - Marianas Trench  
Alone Together - Fall Out Boy  
Past the Point of No Return - Phantom of the Opera  
**_ _ **Without You - Breaking Benjamin  
**_ _ **Anthem of the Angels - Breaking Benjamin  
**_ _ **Lead Me Out of the Dark - Crown the Empire  
**_ _ **On My Own - Tokyo Ghoul S2 insert song, sung by Katherine Liner  
**_ _ **Life is Beautiful - Sixx AM  
**_ _ **I Don't Want To Be Here Anymore - Rise Against  
**_ _ **Dark Passenger - Motionless in White  
**_ _ **Unravel - TK from Ling Tosite Sigure, Tokyo Ghoul S1 opening  
**_ _ **Drown - Bring me the Horizon  
**_ _ **A Tale of Six Trillion Years and a Night - Kemu, Pandora Voxx project (JubyPhonic's lyrics)  
**_ _ **Fix You - Coldplay  
Falling Inside the Black - Skillet  
**_ _ **A Prophecy - Asking Alexandria  
**_ _ **Castle of Glass - Linkin Park  
**_ _ **Somewhere I Belong - Linkin Park  
**_ _ **The Good Left Undone - Rise Against  
**_ _ **Why I'm Home - Go Radio  
**_ _ **Here We Are (Goodbye) - Breaking Benjamin  
Temporary Home - Carrie Underwood  
**_ _ **Swing Low, Sweet Chariot  
**_ _ **In the Stillness of the Shining Sky (Kagayaku Sora no Seijaku ni wa) - Kuroshitsuji II insert song, sung by Kalafina**_


End file.
